GOP faces tough vote on Medicare cuts

Dent, Barletta and Fitzpatrick likely to support GOP budget.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about fiscal policy at George Washington… (Mark Wilson, Getty Images )

April 13, 2011|By Colby Itkowitz, CALL WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — Since 1965, older Americans have depended on Medicare to cover many of their medical costs.

But that comforting — and for taxpayers, increasingly costly — relationship would end in 2022 under a resolution being voted on Friday in the U.S. House.

It's a vote that threatens to leave moderate Republicans like the Lehigh Valley's Charlie Dent on thin political ice. President Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the idea, offered by a key House Republican as a way of reducing spending.

Locally, U.S. Reps. Dent, Lou Barletta and Mike Fitzpatrick represent swing districts with significant elderly populations. In interviews each seemed to suggest that by Friday he would be supporting his party's budget plan and its entitlement cuts, including the proposed changes to Medicare.

The vote is on a 2012 budget resolution, a nonbinding blueprint that sets up a larger spending debate. The Medicare proposal, by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., aims to move seniors onto private health insurance plans by 2022. The seniors would receive a fixed subsidy from the government to purchase their plan.

Ryan's plan would require future seniors to pay about twice what they do now for the same health coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. His plan also would cut in half the cost to taxpayers of all federal health programs, including Medicare.

G. Terry Madonna, a political pollster at Franklin & Marshall College, called the vote "politically risky" because of Medicare's popularity.

"Moderate Republicans are going to face difficult decisions," Madonna said. "Unless they can make a compelling argument for why this is better than what they currently have … How do you wean people off of a safety net that's been around since 1965?"

Dent, who hedged on how he'll vote Friday, defended the proposed Medicare changes as a way to begin the conversation about the pending insolvency of the program.

"If we maintain the status quo there will be a reduction in services and benefits," Dent said. "The issue is we're trying to save Medicare for the next generation."

In Lehigh and Northampton counties, which Dent represents, 15 percent of the population is 65 or older.

Obama, outlining his own broad spending plan Wednesday, called for tightening government spending within the existing Medicare system. Prescription drug spending, the president said, could be lowered "by leveraging Medicare's purchasing power."

Barletta, who also said he is undecided on how he'll vote, indicated it's not the Medicare provision that is holding him back. He said he likes it because it does not affect current seniors: Americans who are now 55 or older would still be covered under the current program.

"We have to deal with entitlements because that's our biggest cost," said Barletta, who represents Carbon and Monroe counties locally. "[But] … we're not going to pull the rug out from seniors."

Fitzpatrick, of Bucks County, echoed his colleagues, noting that current seniors wouldn't be affected and that the future insolvency of Medicare needs to be addressed.

"It's the only serious budget proposal on the table right now that cuts spending without raising taxes," he said. "You have to be mindful of the fact that residents over 55 will not be affected at all. For the younger generation we have to be realistic that without modifications Medicare may not be there for younger Americans."

But altering the Medicare program is not popular with the public. A Gallup poll released Wednesday found only 13 percent of American adults support an overhaul of Medicare. Thirty-four percent say only minor changes should be made, and 27 percent say the government shouldn't try to control costs.

Ray Landis, manager of advocacy for Pennsylvania's AARP, said seniors won't be happy with lawmakers who vote to privatize the system even if it won't have an effect on their own care because they see the program as critically and historically important.